Monday, August 21, 2006

CAPSoff.org has several banners, made by Guss77, based on paulgb's elegant CAPSoff logo.

The "What shall we do with the Caps Lock key" debate has raised many interesting suggestions, some of them polite enough to reprint here.

Mike h proposes a software solution:

Well the CapsLock as any other key on the keyboard can be remapped - as a temporary workaround until we get a solution.

Remapping is a popular fix but it does not work on all operating systems (I'm using a Dana with PalmOS that has no remapping functionality). And you have to go and remap every keyboard, every PC you work with. Yes, I've done this for years, but it seems wrong to have to continue 'fixing' our keyboards like this.

kimlik66 says:

yes i tried Dvorak and it's certainly better. However, i think the needfor a radically designed and much better keyboard is still out there :-)

A new keyboard design is an appealing idea, because the keyboard design for many non-English languages is pitiful. Maybe it's possible to design a keyboard that solves more than one legacy problem. Time for theNew Keyboard? Or should we try to fix one problem at a time?

Jonas points out that:

One new keyboard could be placed on the market once, a "key by key" roadmap with a new key removed/replaced will not be accepted by customers who had to buy a new keyboard every few years. What about a simple LED within the key for the beginning? I think about a kind of modular keyboard layout with extra space for language related characters and programmable keys.

Which is very sensible. The current mishmash of European language keyboards is a serious problem, since in every different language, letters and punctuation jump around randomly. Can we really solve this? Jonas, make us a proposal, if you like. Personally I'd love to see a single keyboard for all Latin alphabets, with clear access to accented characters. Why does my qwerty keyboard not let me type Spanish or Dutch? It should be possible to create a single European keyboard. Maybe the EU Commission would sponsor a study to create a single European Keyboard, since the different keyboard layouts are a barrier to internal movement of labour?

juve has a simpler and surprisingly popular solution:

I always rip it out of my keyboard.

It certainly makes a statement. I can't encourage the vandalism of public equipment - e.g. in libraries - but maybe it's time to start a "Rip it out!" campaign where people can remove their Caps Lock keys and send them to us. How many could we collect? Would anyone care?

huempu suggest:

A good idea would be to remove the lock on caps lock. The CAPS-lock key could be turned into an alternative shift.

Which would make three shifts. r03 had the idea of a second Enter key, which is intriguing. Typing would become a little like playing pinball. And two Enter keys would certainly be nicer for left-handers.

But Sudden Disruption speaks for many people when he says that:

I've been key swapping Capslock with Control ever since IBM screwed up the placement and I'd REALLY miss having a Control key there.. Actually, I move Capslock to F12 and keep two Control keys. But the one that gets all the use is where Capslock used to be.

Which I guess was what I wanted when is started CAPSoff. But Jonas and many like him have pointed out that the keyboard is really broken in other ways too. That's the problem with a grass-roots campaign - you never know where it's going to take you. Anyhow, so long as Caps Lock disappears from its current location, I'll be happy.

Steve puts it all together:

The caps-lock key is just a convenience for an inconvenient problem from the past.

Sure, everyone hates change, but without change we'd all still be living in caves and hunting mammoths with big sticks. When Apple stopped delivering computers with floppy drives people said they couldn't cope. Instead, those people discovered networks, email and USB sticks for moving data around. Now, no-one even considers the loss. The removal of the caps lock should be similar. If you really really REALLY can't cope, you'll still be able to get an "old-style" keyboard on the open market. Meanwhile, the masses will have moved on to the next step of keyboard evolution.

62 Comments:

Not that I don't agree with you about the Caps-Lock key, but isn't it so that many people (I noticed with interest that even you did)specially in you country and in France, they do write their name (only lastname for France) with capitals letters? And if you then do have a long name, isn't it then okay to have a Caps-Lock key?

I do agree the placement of the key is a problem, but with all those keys which is availebel on newer keyboards this shouldn't provide any problem, as most of them never are used anyway.

It seams like the manufactors thinks we use all there smart keys, which we actually don't, well I don't use them.

So why not come up with a programmable keyboard, then you don't have to worry about the OS. It can come with default configuration choices, such as qwerty. Then everyone can map their own keyboards to exactly the way they like. You can then upload your mapped keyboard configuration to your Myspace or Cyworld or memory stick. Now wherever you go - your friends house, public library, just download your configuration to that keyboard, and you have a keyboard of your choice.

The problem there is, what letters, numbers, & symbols do you etch onto the keys?

I couldn't agree more. I even contacted Microsoft about why the CapsLock and Control keys were swapped . The MS contact really didn't know what I was talking about; too young. She said the keyboards are hardwired and software won't change anything. No one could tell me why the keys were ever swapped. My first PC keyboard (1983) had the CONTROL key next to the "A" key; my next keyboard had a switch on the bottom to swap the two keys. Those keyboards allowed my pinkie to hit CONTROL and then I could use the WORDSTAR diamond. It was beautiful.Kay

Great campaign. I have a more radical view in that the whole keyboard needs to be replaced but baby steps...let's start with the caps lock key. I see the petition is growing nicely...hopefully we can get enough people talking about this issue to make a difference. BTW don't you want to open up your comments so non blogger readers can comment too?

I use the Caps Lock key kind of like the shift key, turning it on and off rapidly. It's kind of weird, I know, but it's a habit I got into.

Also, there ARE some good uses for Caps Lock, when used sparingly. Internet emphases aside, many advertisement designers, I am sure, use it often on things such as billboards and posters, either for emphasis or simple clarity from a long distance. Also, I believe many people use it for acronyms, of which there are plenty in this world.

As a freelance writer I admit to rarely using the caps-lock function. If I want to be rude to somebody over the wires, I like to think I can do this through judicious use of language and syntax and not by way of a lazy command on a computer keyboard.

Depending on the task in hand, however - someone mentioned data-entry - caps-lock can occasionally be a useful tool.

Like so much of what happens in modern life (and is usually foisted upon us by busybody governments) your curious initiative appears designed to do nothing other than to save us from ourselves. It is as though you perceive everyone out here in cyberville to be so incapable of rational thought and action that you feel you must undertake a grand crusade on our behalf and ride to our collective rescue - to an end which actually amounts to very little.

If I do not need the caps-lock key, I do not use it. However, I bitterly resent the thought of an innocent computing function being removed by a self-appointed guru of computing etiquette as though I were a naughty schoolboy abusing a rain-gauge.

Peter, you really need to get out more (as do I, probably, for even bothering to post this reply). But I would invite you to consider this: if your brave campaign succeeds, will it make our lives demonstrably easier, more polite and comparatively free of poorly-expressed online rancour? Or will it simply be another manifestation of pointless, nannying interference from an opinionated 'expert' who believes he knows what's best for everyone?

Nice site, nice idea. Such is the power of digg.com that you were submitted around five times. I have hated caps-lock for a long time, since my BASIC programming days in the late 70s. I did a lot of COBOL in the 80s, luckily using MicroFocus COBOL which would handle lower case. COBOL looks really wierd in lower case.

Okay, I saw the article in the newspaper today, De Morgen, I read it through carefully, and I can understand some points of it, like you say THAT IT SEEMS RUDE TO TYPE IN CAPS, LIKE YOU'RE SHOUTING.But you're forgetting a very big part of the computer community: The gamers.We use caps lock in almost every game, to toggle between certain modes (crouching, running, stuff like that) and even Num Lock could be handy.

I read in the newspaper you'd also like to see prt scrn disappear: that's total rubbish. It's a damned handy key if you wanna take a quick screenshot, of just your desktop, to show off to other people, or to make a shot of a bug report you're getting.

Bram, I've nothing against PrtScr, though many people have complained about this key (and about Ins, and Scroll Lock, and the Windows key, and the Sys Rq key, and so on.)

There are many hundreds of functions that could go onto the keyboard. Many of these evolved after the keyboard was designed - look at all the shortcuts on your menus. Many of these are used a lot more than those special keys that were granted to us in 1980 or so by IBM.

Leif: if I have to write HINTJENS I do it with the left shift key. It's a lot faster than using Caps Lock.

aegnor: I don't need any more reason than the thousands of people who say, "yes, I support this campaign".

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Yah know what else is wrong with the keyboard, the ctrl key is so far away. I really enjoy the apple keyboards because the ctrl equivalent key, the command key, is right next to the space bar. Genius! I've become pretty proficient on both PC and Apple keyboards, but whenever I find my self using a PC keyboard its always so annoying to me that the ctrl key is so far away from all the activity. Lets change it closer to the action!

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